


he and i in a borrowed car

by inkspl0tches



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, On the Run, Post-Series, Romance, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3187160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspl0tches/pseuds/inkspl0tches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe you should get a map. </p><p>post-truth // moments on the road in seven parts</p>
            </blockquote>





	he and i in a borrowed car

__

_We are lost!" the captain shouted_  
_As he staggered down the stairs._

_But his little daughter whispered,_  
_As she took his icy hand,_  
_"Isn't God, upon the ocean,_  
_Just the same as on the land?"_

The Captain's Daughter // James T Fields 

__

 

_i._

The roads are the same as the pictures that hang on the walls of every motel. Generic, vague, different enough that you notice a change, but not so much that you (despite your FBI training and critical eye) can pick it out, and always, always familiar. Like you’ve seen them before. But, hell, with your history (of roads and cheap motel rooms and flat stretches of land that move outwards and onwards, unwavering and endless, in unbroken lines) you probably have.

This specific road, although there is nothing specific about it other than the fact that you are on it, is pulled so tight and flat across dry land that you feel as though it may snap like a rubber band, throwing you backwards across the miles you've covered, back to where you started. All you have to do is wait.

Mulder is driving. You doubt he has any more of an idea of where you’re going than you do, but you’re thankful for the confident way his hands grip the steering wheel, a lifetime of borrowed cars under his palms.

You stretch out so your fingers brush the worn jean over his knee. He glances at you and his smile is tight-lipped and quick.

It’s miles and miles of tight dark road. You squint your eyes over the horizon and think about snapping, think about retracing your steps, untangling the criss-crossed lines you've made across the country until you can see a single dark arrow, something linear and solid, with a beginning and an end shimmering in the distance like a mirage. A desert promise.

You think about starting over.

 

  _ii._

Here are the rules: you can look at him if you don’t say anything, touch him if you don’t think, kiss him if you choke down words and screw your eyes shut against ghosts and shape shifters and your son’s face peering up at you. (oh, but his eyes were just like his father’s, in color and depth and the way they looked at you and past you and through you to something beyond you that you can’t -- couldn’t -- quite comprehend).

Here are the rules: cry in the shower where he can’t here you. Tell him you are fine and pretend you don’t think about leaving.

“So what do we do now?” you say, breaking seventy-mile silence. Your voice feels chipped away. You are very small in his peripheral vision.

“We keep going.” He doesn’t look at you.

“And when the world ends? What then?” Twist the ends of your words just like that. Barbed wire at the end of a question mark. Curl your lip and hurt him because he left you and he lied to you and for seventy miles there has been silence.

He turns to you then and you add yourself up in his eyes. Plus one impending apocalypse. Minus one son. Add an open road and bad coffee. Add motel rooms and words like stained glass, fragile with shards that cut. Add not telling him you love him because do you? Still? And then, quick, subtract that last thing because you do and you know it and he knows it and you hate him for the hold he has on you. Add red eyes and unwashed hair. Subtract a handful of dignity, subtract your sharp suits and shoes with heels like scalpels. This is the arithmetic sum of you, this is what he sees.

“We just keep going, Scully,” he says. He moves like he’s going to touch you and you imagine yourself shrinking back against the glass of the window, imagine the hurt in his eyes, imagine leaving him sleeping in a motel by the road and hitchhiking your way to something like reality. But you meet him halfway instead, capture his hand in yours, press it against your chest.

“We just keep going,” he says again, squeezes your fingers, and you close your eyes.

Here are the rules: it doesn’t matter, you keep breaking them.

His palm is warm in yours. The sound of the road beneath the tires is like the tide. You let the current pull you out to sea.

 

  _iii._

The the physics of it are simple. It's not the butterfly effect, a sneeze in Africa causing a landslide in Colorado. It's infinitesimal, almost intangible, it's in the way that you go left and he goes right. It's in the logistics of the way you sleep. 

On the first night you’d been tangled in each other, you’d pressed your face into his chest and listened to him murmur nothing into your hair, you’d slept with one hand fisted in his shirt for the fear that you would wake up and he’d been gone. On the second, you'd fallen away from each other exhausted and hot with the heat of each other's skin. On the third he'd woken shaking, tossing and turning on the right side of the bed and you'd drawn him to you but quietly, quietly. Maybe you whispered his name, maybe assured him he was alright, he was safe. You don't remember. Your shoulder ached in the morning from the weight of him.

The fourth night and you are burning white with comet's tail fury, throwing something across the room that shatters. Screaming that you hate him, you hate him, you hate him. He tells you to leave, he never wanted you there in the first place, you shouldn't have come. You say you wish you could, say that maybe you will. He goes for a run and he is gone a long, long time. You think maybe he's made it easy for you. He's left so you don't have to. 

"Do you really want to leave?" he asks your spine when he gets back (You try to tell yourself you're surprised, but you aren't. Not really). You don't roll over on the motel bed, address the yellowed wall instead. 

"Do you really want me to?" 

"I didn't want this for you, Scully."

Ah, Mulder. King of dancing around the question, martyr to the last. You say nothing.

Later he brushes your arm with his fingertips, hovers close to your ear and whispers, "Please stay."

You pretend to be asleep. 

In the morning you get up before him. Shower and paint your name into the fog of the bathroom mirror with a finger tip, wait for the streaky lines to disappear. You were here. 

You pack your bag and throw it in the back seat of the car, slam the door harder than necessary. Turn up the radio and put your feet up on the dash. The early morning light in Utah is pink-gold and you watch the skyline through squinted eyes. Slices of clouds scratch across the skyline and you feel the cool weight of your gun tucked into the waistband of your jeans. You watch the clock until 7:05 and then start the engine. 

He bursts out of the motel half-dressed, his eyes wide with something like panic. You can see your name on his lips even though you can't hear him with the music turned up. You know exactly how he sounds though, terrified and shouting your name not into the Utah morning but into some dark abyss. You know how you sound when you answer. You like that, and maybe you shouldn't, but it's familiar in the way things haven't been for a long time. You roll down the window, loll your head to the side and offer a ghost of a smile, a phantasmal twitch of the lips. 

"Well," you say. "Are you coming?" 

 

_iv._

It looks like every other diner, all awash in fluorescent light. The vinyl booths are sticky, the food greasy and the beer terrible. It feels like a place you might have visited a long time ago, where you would have peered at him over the menu and spread case-files on the slick tabletops, sliding them to each other in between bites of burger and argument like the world's most intellectual game of tabletop football. It's a relic from a forgotten era fossilized in the middle of the desert. No one will dig you up here.

 You have no right to feel safe. You are not safe. You are no longer the FBI’s most unwanted (“Hell,” he’d said, “I’ll drink to that.”) you tell yourself this as you get tipsy on cheap beer and fall all over each other in the corner booth by the jukebox.

“It's our honeymoon,” Mulder tells Mabel, your take-no-shit waitress, in the same voice he used to use when he'd hold up his badge ( _special agents mulder and scully_ ) in the hope it would get you preferential treatment. She squints at you, taking in your dirty jeans, your lack of wedding rings and the way you're holding the edge of his jacket like if you let go he might vanish into thin air. Abra-ca-da-bra. She shrugs like she’s seen worse.

“Congratulations.”

Mulder cocks his head at you and wrinkles his nose. “Maybe we should have gone with that romantic island getaway instead.”

##

You catch sight of a formally dressed couple deep in conversation at a booth across the restaurant. They're both in black and the coffee they're drinking looks darker than their coats. They echo of something, some deep reminder of flukemen and vampires and flash light beams bobbing in the dark.

Mulder taps your thigh and points with the lip of his beer bottle. “Look familiar, Agent Scully?”

“Very much so, Agent Mulder.”

“Do you miss it?”

You lean your head against his shoulder and tilt your face so you're speaking to the curve of his jaw. “Yeah,” you breathe.

“Do you wish we could go back? To the way it was?”

You look at the couple. You pity them, then you envy them, and then you pity them again. Ghosts of your former selves. Everywhere you go is haunted these days.

“No,” you say. “Do you?” You tighten your grip on him as you wait for an answer.

“Always,” he says. “Never. Something in between.”

## 

"Brown Eyed Girl" comes on after he takes yet another turn at the juke. You're running out of quarters.

You raise your eyebrows. "You know my eyes are blue, right?"

"They are?"

You blink dramatically to prove your point.

He kisses the corner of your mouth. "Like the ocean," he murmurs.

 ##

The manager kicks you out just after one am, before the final song Mulder so carefully selected has come on, but he agrees to leave the door open and let it play as he wipes down the tables.

Mulder twirls you out the door and the opening strains of "Walking in Memphis" float after you. You throw back your head and laugh so that you don't cry.

His lips are close to your ear. “Dance with me?”

You nod, but you can't help thinking you would never do this sober. You might not even do this drunk. But you are no longer in possession of any document bearing your real name so maybe you don't exist, not now, not anymore, not ever.

The parking lot smells like hot asphalt and the crickets are almost louder than the music, but you wrap your arms around his waist and press your head to his chest, let his heart beat be the bass line.

"Scully," he says, seriously so that you look at him. "Don't you think this is a little, um, unprofessional?" 

You laugh. "What would Skinner think?" 

"Who knows." He lowers his voice, "I know what your mother would think." 

"Oh?" The mention of your mother makes your throat tighten.  _How could you, Dana? He was your son. My grandchild. How could you?_

"Yeah, she'd think: leave room for the Holy Spirit."  

"Mulder! She would not."  

"She would." He kisses the crown of your head and you lapse into silence again.

"My mom loved you."

"Your mom _loves_ you."

"Yeah."  

You sway in the spotlight of the parking lot's single white street lamp, illuminated and ghostly in its glare; a humid night's homecoming king and queen. The insects that hover above you, the abandoned cars in the lot, and the manager who shakes his head and watches through the windows are your court.

There is no encore.

 

_v._

"Do you think he's happy?" On the sagging porch of a sinking motel outside Tenessee. Back to you, eyes to the sky. 

"I think he's safe." ****

Your socks catch and snare in tiny tendrils on the splintering wood of the porch. The low-slung awning and worn grey poles frame his silhouette in the morning light as he looks out over the parking lot. For a moment you’re not sure what state you’re in. Or what year it is. You wrap your arms around his waist and fit yourself into the space between his shoulder blades. Your fingers find the ghost of a scar tracing angrily up his stomach through his t-shirt. You remember what year it is, then.

"But do you think he's happy?" 

You move away to stand against the rail next to him. You're so good at having conversations without looking at each other these days. 

"God, I hope so." 

You're picking at the ends of your sweater. You wish you had something in your hands. You were used to precise incisions, responsibility and technique and the weight of a scalpel in your fingers.

"I don't hate you, Scully," he says to the sky. 

"I know." 

"I left. You did what you had to do." 

He does not tell you you did the right thing. 

"I know," you say again. Your voice is dark with road-dust and something else. He wraps an arm around your shoulders and you sink into him, just a little bit, just enough. 

"I'm his mother," you breathe. "I'm his mother."

 

_vi._

You used to pray for them to find his sister. Back when you still prayed, back when you still thought he would find her, back when your suits didn't quite fit and you didn't quite know what to make of the title Mrs. Spooky. You'd prayed on the first night in the motel room, silently, thinking of Mulder's fingers on your cross. You'd prayed for both of your safeties, prayed that your son, your son, was beautiful and happy and safe and loved. You'd prayed that your mother would forgive you and the government wouldn't find you and if the world ended, when it ended, please, God, let it be quick and let me be with him.

And now? Now you are praying that that groaning, popping sound you heard from the rear of the car was not a flat tire. 

Mulder looks at you in that sideways way he used to save for Monday mornings before you'd had enough coffee and after he'd started clicking through slides about bloodsuckers and killer bees, werewolves and will-o-wisps. That look said:  _I can hear you sighing already._ And:  _I know._ And:  _bear with me_. You always did. You always do. 

You sit a little ways off the road, waiting for a tow truck, trying not to worry about whether or not the faces of the infamous Mulder and Scully have been plastered all over the sleepy town ten miles off. You have your guns, you tell yourself. You try not to think about how easily you would kill for him.

You look off into the total stillness of the woods beyond the highway. This is the kind of dark you used to poke holes in with flashlights, like the top of a jar filled with fireflies. Mulder nudges your knee with his. 

"You know what the resident monster of Montana is, Scully?" 

You wonder if he can see you smile in the dark. You hope so. You sniff, your right eyebrow rising of it's on volition. This was always such an easy game to play. 

"I can't say that I do." 

"Shall I enlighten you?" He's so eager. He almost has you believing he's about to slide a case file across the desk in the basement and announce that Skinner has you on the next flight. 

"I could say no, but you would anyways." 

"Ah, you do know me. Well -"

"Wait, Mulder," you interrupt, eyes going wide. "No presentation? No slides?"

He pats his pockets like he'll discover a projector hidden inside his coat, then he shrugs."Damn, I must have left it at home."

"Well, I don't know how you'll keep my attention."

He kisses you. It's quick and chaste and just because he can. He wraps one arm around your waist. 

"I've missed you. I've missed us," he says into your hair. You nod against his shoulder, finding his hand and lacing your fingers together. The darkness of the forest is pressing in on you now, thick and cloying and too sweet. You want him to take it and spin it into something magic, straw into gold. He could turn the tree line beyond the highway into myth, write you fiction with his frozen breath in the cold night air. 

"Tell me about the monster, Mulder," you whisper. "Please."  

 

 _vi_. 

The hair-dye aisle of the drugstore is like a museum. It's fascinating and overwhelming and you aren't quite sure what you're allowed to touch. Who knew there were so many shades of blonde?

"Scully," Mulder gasps from a few feet down the aisle. He turns to you with a smile cracking across his face like lightening. He's shaking a box of dye at you. 

You snatch it from him and read the name. 

"Mulder, no." 

## 

Three hours, a considerable amount of bleach and a box of hair dye later and your hair is sunflower blonde. He'd liked the name and you'd been persuaded by the color. A sunflower blond and her sunflower seed man. You sound like you should be robbing banks. You tell him so in the car and he barks a laugh. Should we rob a bank? he asks. You tell him that you'll think about it. 

"I'll miss the red," he said as you cocked your head in the bathroom mirror. The dye box was still closed on the counter in front of you. 

"Mulder, you're color blind." 

"I know," he said, fingering a strand of your hair. "Frohike said your hair was like fire." 

You start to tell him he's afraid of fire but you change your mind. 

##

He'd slept while you spilled dye on porcelain sink. The sharp sickly sweet smell of bleach had hit you as you opened the bottle and for a moment you could feel the cool granite of the bathroom counter under your summer-sweaty thighs, the roar of the blow-dryer, and the heel of your bare foot banging against the counter as you watch Melissa’s newly blonde and bleach-scented hair dance in the hot air. 

 “What’d you think?” she was cocking her head at you, the platinum blonde brushing over her collarbones. It makes her eyes look dark, you'd thought, almost black. You'd wonder where your sister was.

“I like it,” you lied.

She'd smiled brilliantly. You thought maybe you weren’t lying after all.

“So do I.”

##

You don’t mean to wake him, but he, acutely calibrated like some delicate machine whose only function is to be aware of your presence, opens his eyes immediately when you slip in beside him.

“Hey,” you say softly.

“Hey.”

He reaches out to touch your ashy-blonde hair, weaving it between his fingers. It’s too long, you’d noticed while you were drying it, humid strands tangling under the dry heat of the blow dryer. Mulder used to joke that your hair could be used as a weapon, should the need arise ( _you could do some serious damage, scully, you could slice people open with that hair)._ Now it would be useless in a combat situation. And the need always seemed to arise, at one point or another.

“It’s different,” he says, brushing it out of your eyes and resting his hand on your cheek.

“What’d you think?” 

“I like it,” he murmurs. You smile brilliantly.

“So do I,” you say, curling into him. Your hair is white against his black shirt.

The evening light filters through both sets of curtains, the ones over the windows and the ones that tumble, blonde and tangled, into your eyes. The light through your hair is gold and dappled. He wraps his arms around you, his body sleep-warm and his breath still echoing faintly of sunflower seeds. 

You dream that your hair is fire.

 

_vii._

_The Blessings River Motel_ is the first one you've seen for miles. You'd wanted to pull over and find a map, but he'd refused. You've been driving without direction for weeks. You wonder if you can be lost when you don't know where it is you're going. 

You're pretty sure that what you hate about the road, more than anything, more than fast-food and radio static and heavy silences and utter invisibility, are the motels. Not the rooms themselves, although they are scratchy and stained and too-slick. The names. _The fucking names. Pine Haven. Lucky Cuss. Moon Magic._ It seems the farther you get from civilization, the closer you get to failed poets who have taken up motel naming on the side.  It didn't used to bother you, it may have even amused you. Now it feels like they're mocking you, and the names grate against you like skinning your knee against asphalt. It stings.

The Blessings River Motel.

You don't see a river anywhere, you're in the middle of the desert for fuck's sake, nor are you sure you'll feel very blessed. Still, you allow the inconsistent shower spray in your room to baptize you, absolve you of your road grime, but none of your sins. 

##

On top of a too-thin motel mattress and under the too-stiff sheets you curl yourself around him.

He blinks, but he sees you. Really sees you, for the first time in a long time, you think. You realize you had been hoping he was awake. He runs the backs of his fingers over your cheek, down the curve of your neck and shoulder, finds your hand and tangles your fingers together before bringing it to his lips.

“We're lost,” he says into your knuckles like he's confessing. On your knees, and three Hail Mary's, please.

“I know,” you say. 

“Maybe we need to get a map,” he murmurs. The wind outside the motel room crashes against the windows in waves. You kiss him with saltwater lips and remember. 

"I'm a navy captain's daughter, Mulder," you say, like it solves everything. (And he looks at you like salvation so maybe it does). "I can navigate by the stars."

__

_Then we kissed the little maiden._  
_And we spoke in better cheer,_  
_And we anchored safe in harbour_  
_When the morn was shining clear._  
__

fin. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Special thanks to wine mom Abby aka tumblr user coolxfilesmom. She made the playlist that made this fic. Sorry for shouting into you inbox at weird times of the night.  
> \- The title is from the 'Til Tuesday song "Coming up Close"  
> 


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